Massachusetts Democratic Party leaders last week took a stand against a ballot question that would allow people to vote across party lines in state primary races, a move they say would increase the influence of Republican voters.
On Thursday, the Democratic State Committee voted to oppose the Massachusetts Top-Two Primary Elections initiative, which would place Republicans, Democrats and independent candidates in the same primary, advancing only the top two candidates to the general election.
Under the current system, Democrats and Republicans vote in separate primaries, while independent voters can cast ballot in either party’s primary, but not both.
The proposed change, which passed an initial signature threshold to make the November ballot, but must first be taken up by the Legislature, would only apply to state and county races, not city elections. It is not yet clear if state lawmakers will take action on the measure. If the Legislature does not advance it, proponents must gather additional signatures this summer to get it on the fall ballot.
Danielle Allen, the Harvard professor and one-time gubernatorial candidate who is the leading the ballot initiative, argues that the current system discourages people from participating in elections by forcing independent voters — who make up the majority of the electorate — to choose to vote in the primary election of just one party.
“Unenrolled (or independent) voters, who make up 65 percent of the electorate in the state and lag in turnout in the primaries, are also sidelined in the most consequential stage of the election cycle,” Allen wrote in a March 19 opinion piece in the Boston Globe.
Allen could not be reached for comment for this article.
While independent voters can and do vote in either primary, some Democratic activists are concerned that allowing Republicans to vote in the same primaries as Democratic voters could push the party’s politics to the right.
“I just don’t think that the problem with our elections is that MAGA Republicans don’t have enough say in our primaries,” says Jordan Berg Powers, a PhD student who used to work for Allen’s nonprofit, Partners in Democracy. “This ballot question would give that to them.”
Allen is no stranger to the state’s political process. In 2022, she ran for governor as a Democrat but was eliminated from the process at the state convention when she failed to garner the 15 percent of the vote she would have needed to appear on the Democratic ballot. The Massachusetts Democrats and Republican parties require the same eligibility threshold of candidates.
Allen founded the nonprofit Partners in Democracy the same year to push for reforms in electoral systems — primarily in Massachusetts.
Democratic activists opposed to Allen’s ballot referendum point to California, which adopted a top-two primary system in 2024. Although a majority of voters there are Democrats, in the current race for governor, two Republicans have led in recent polls with 30 percent of the vote between them, while five Democrats have split the other 70 percent of the vote five ways.
Although more California voters are backing Democratic candidates than Republicans, without a separate primary to pare down the field, it’s possible that no Democrat will make it to the general election.
Democratic strategists in Massachusetts are seeing the possibility of the same scenario playing out here. As a Democratic supermajority state, Massachusetts Democratic primaries often draw more candidates than do Republican primaries here — a dynamic that under a top-two primary could lead to a diluted Democratic vote.
Campaign consultant Elaine Almquist, who sits on the Democratic State Committee, points to a top-two vote scenario that she says could dilute democracy.
“If two people are close to each other in their opinions, they typically split the votes and the least popular person advances,” she said, citing a dynamic she’s observed at play in nonpartisan local elections. “It really changes the tone and tenor of the general election.”
Like Berg Powers, Almquist has a past connection to Allen. She sat on a committee that Allen convened through Partners in Democracy to discuss possible democratic reforms. In June of last year, the committee took up the issue of top-two primaries.
“We had a robust conversation about it,” she recalled. “There was a consensus to vote it down.” A week later, Allen disbanded the committee.
Her ballot question should be well funded. The Coalition for a Healthy Democracy political action committee backing the question has received more than $2 million since it launched in January of last year, nearly three-quarters of that came from private equity investors.
Besides Allen, the proposal has other high-profile supporters, including current State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, former Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, and Kerry Healey, who served as the state’s lieutenant governor with the GOP’s Mitt Romney. Steve Grossman, the former state treasurer and former leader of the state Democratic party supports the measure.
But Democratic State Committee member Jonathan Cohn said opposition to the measure is strong within the current party apparatus.
“It’s something that unites progressive activists and party establishment types,” he said.
